A Classy B*stard's 9 to 5
 

INTRODUCTION: As promised, I'm officially launching this journal to showcase the fanatbulous misadventures of an academic Victorian sir trapped in a thankless entry-level job with insipid dolts who somehow manage to walk erect despite their baffling ignorance. And every word of it is true. Stay tuned at ~5:30 every Monday for more sh*t I have to put up with.

Entry 1: Partly Dave

I’d like to introduce a business peer of mine - a gent who we shall call, “Dave”, in part because it is a common and uninspiring name, much like the fellow himself, and also because that actually is his name.

Dave is thick and malformed, much like his cerebral processes. He wears a fixed expression, one of simultaneous confusion and what appears to be a difficulty in respiration due to his rubbery, brick-like stature.

Dave is a peculiar man, who drinks eggs and energy shakes for every lunchtime meal, (which apparently have done no good to improve his physical form). Dave fancies himself a high-ranking member of the Polish mafia, (or a gangsta, or whatever he decides to call himself in a particular week).

But it is his staggering cognitive ineptitude which inspires me to share his musings with you. He routinely enjoys making Pollock, Jew, retard, and A-rab jokes. Dave also delights in making fart noises whenever a female bends over in his vicinity, (likely one of the contributing factors to his rise to the position of management). Permit me to relate just one of many inspiring conversations which transpired between myself and this magnificent specimen of manhood.

Dave: “Yo, [ISB]?”

ISB: “Yes, Dave?”

Dave: “If you could have any superpower in the world, what would it be?”

ISB: “Well, Dave, I suppose I would like the ability to inspire critical and rational thinking among all ladies and gentlemen and to empower them with reason, the capacity for argumentation, and hopefully inspire great progress within our species, artistically, culturally, scientifically, and philosophically.”

Dave: “Yeah? I’d wanna see chicks naked.”

ISB: “(sigh….) You’re special, Dave.”

Dave: “I know.”

I feel like I could get along with Dave.

You would love my other coworkers as well. I once approached a gaggle/murder/flock (what do you call a group of idiots?), in a hopeless effort to socialize with them.

I foolishly posed the question, "so what have you guys been reading lately?"

Faces contorted in response, and one of them replied, thoroughly confused, "you mean like... school books? I've never read anything that I wasn't forced to by a teacher."

I never attempted to associate with them ever again.

Lol. I've been working fast food long enough that I'm cool with low-income people who don't read, don't listen to non-radio music, and find me to be a weirdo. For all my whiteness, you might find that I have at least 30% ebonics in my conversational terminology due to the amount of poor blacks I've been in contact with for months on end for years. So I'm just used to "normal" people of various types.

I feel like you could be Dave.
A "congress"? :laughing:

Delighted to see this finally see the light of publication, ISB. Will most definitely be following. :thumb:

Entry 2: Gazing into the Void

Our CEO hired a sexagenarian to fill a vacancy for a customer service rep, and I was charged with the task of teaching him how to use a computer. Hours were spent on fundamentals such as operating a mouse, how to navigate folders, and how to send emails, however advanced tasks like copying and pasting files were beyond his capacity and he was relieved of his position after two weeks. But not to be deterred, our corporate hero promptly hired another grandfather for the same position, and the dance steps continued following the same expected pattern. After a week passed and the new employee still failed to operate a mouse with any proficiency, my boss had a brilliant and novel idea - instead of having this elderly gentleman work a computer, his skills would be better directed if we promoted him to the position of lead salesperson and liaison for our mobile apps!

For a moment I thought I might challenge this promotion, based on my supposition that it might be difficult for someone who doesn’t know what an app is to be responsible for the peddling of such a product to our potential clients. But I quickly realized that I was clearly mistaken, and straight away begin training our new employee on what an app is, how a smartphone works, what the Google and Apple app stores are, and the rest of the last 25 years of tech. Because what could possibly instill greater confidence in our customers than having a gray-haired grandfather come into their places of business to sell them an app in the style of a used car salesman? Perhaps I’m entirely in the wrong in this mindset. Perhaps I am being ageist. I just think there might be persons better-qualified to sell mobile apps than a Walmart greeter.

Still, do not misunderstand me - The newcomer has already demonstrated great value in the marketing of our company’s image, as he introduced a promotional novelty item which we now hand out to all of our contacts. It’s cutting-edge, tech-savvy, ultra-modern, and speaks for our place in the app world. (And by that of course, I mean it’s embarrassingly tacky, horrifically dated, rife with pun humor, and so culturally spent that the concept was grimace-inducing just months after its debut at The World’s Fair back in 1964.) I am referring to none other than the notorious, “Round Tuit.”

(I’ll wait for you to give an exhausted sigh of compassionate discomfort at that last utterance.)

But the real peach - the greatest demonstrative moment of our new marketing guru’s sheer brilliance came on Friday, when he humbly requested my assistance in troubleshooting a difficulty he was experiencing with his computer’s audio. “I’m trying to watch this training video,” he explained. “I’ve dialed up the volume on YouTube, but there isn’t any sound.”

I looked at him, for the very briefest of moments - and in that instant an eternity washed over my life force, eroding my conviction to maintain respiration right down to my cellular level. I stared, transfixed by the awesome cavernous infinity that was the void where his understanding of technology might have resided. Blinking myself back to the disheartening reality and the gravity of the situation, I cleared my throat, nodded thoughtfully to communicate my understanding, and said, as respectfully and innocuously as possible, “I see the problem. You haven’t any speakers.”

I made my exit, permitting the dramatic silence left in my absence to reinforce the very hopelessness of it all.

Old people are the future.

This is good. Thank you ISB.

Entry 3: Running a Business by The Good Book
 

Entry 3: Running a Business by The Good Book

I’ve come to understand that those in positions of authority are seldom popular with their workforce and that capitalism generally promotes the most egotistical, uninformed, and conservative persons to the highest ranks in business. Still, the CEO of my company is an impressively special someone who I feel compelled to relate to you if only to prevent an aneurysm from keeping the tale captive inside my tormented mind.

I work for a Christian fundamentalist white nationalist Bible literalist who is convinced that Revelations will occur in the next 5-10 years. He’s the CEO of a print company which consists of myself, his wife, and two other persons… and three of the four of us are grandparents who lack even the most fundamental knowledge of how to operate a computer. So consequently, our only print work comes from his fellow church buddies. (The last book I produced for him was a pastor’s guide to banishing demons from your home or who might have taken possession of your loved ones.) This CEO enters the office fist-pumping and shouting “TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP!”, and (as you might expect), is fantastically ill-suited to lead his sister enterprise - an app publishing company.

So I’ve spent the last two weeks from 8:30 to 5 training our staff on how to left and right click, how to copy and paste files, how to use folders, and how to send emails. Some advanced tasks have proven difficult for them to master, such as operating a mouse. (I am not kidding - they wield the thing like it’s fighting them to get free.)

I proactively, (but futilely) labored to create a business strategy for our stagnant app company. I called attention to glaring errors on our company website which makes us look wholly inept, (such as the large missing form object reporting an error on our 1990s Geocities-syle home page). Sadly, despite my efforts, the site has remained unchanged for nearly a year following my communication. I also expressed that we needed to hire an industry professional to write articles for our blog about the latest trends in the app industry, to which our CEO responded, “start writing.” Not to be deterred, I composed several in-depth and well-researched articles - one on the subjects of App Stagnation, Effective Monetization, Mobile Retention and Growth Strategies and another on Using The Mobile Maturity Cycle to Drive User Acquisition. These each describe processes critical to the success of a mobile developer. Unfortunately, after nearly half of a year, our CEO still has yet to even read them.

A few months ago, he suddenly decided that we now sell social media management services as well, (sure… why the f*ck not?), I prepared a Definitive Guide to Social Media Marketing to introduce him to the responsibilities this market will require of us. That was in October and I’ve yet to receive a reply. (This makes me feel like the most valued m*therf*cker in the world.) Instead, our CEO informed me that the entirety of social media management simply means logging into a Facebook account once a week to see whether there are any notifications.

“But [ISB]!” you might exclaim. “What the hell have you been doing all day without any clients for an entire YEAR?!” I spend most days being demoted to bindery work - hand folding thousands of sheets of paper, stuffing and sealing thousands of envelopes, and manually applying postage stamps to print mailing jobs as we do not have enough design business to keep me occupied. And when that work dries up, (and trust me, it does), I'm handed a dustpan and broom and told to sweep the grounds.

It really makes all those years of college seem worth it.

Man, I feel for you. I assume you have now left, or are in the process of leaving this desperately sinking ship? Here's something that should tickle you and indeed prove relevant to your colleagues.

What educational background do you have, [ISB]?

A wonderfully apt clip - thank you, TH!

My last day will be next Monday, and I have to come in over the weekend to train the new hire. The abuse continues daily, and I promise it will get worse with each new post in fond memorium of this sinking ship.

Stay tuned!

Entirely self-educated. I spent my youth in various asylumns where volunteers huddled together mentally ill children aged 12-18 and taught down to the dumbest kid in the room. Graduated valedictorian with the highest marks in the "school"'s history, (like being the world's tallest midget), and went off to university.

I was already proficient in the history of design and all related softwares so I was permitted to assistant teach all my classes and got an A.S. in Visual Communication and Graphic Design.

A few months of art college proved to be a waste as their entire curriculum consisted of handing students paintbrushes and recommending mind-altering substances to help us find our muse. I quickly dropped out.

Been in the industry as a designer for 18 years, and as challenges arose to develop paperless workflow automation solutions, digital publishing apps, pre-order pre-pay apps, mobile timecard solutions, and print workflow automations, I sat down, figured it out, and made it happen.

I've been doing IT and networking support for years, so the move seemed logical. The new gig is entry level with training for their proprietary software provided.

And all my work in music education - the lectures, multimedia work, papers, my foundation project, blogging, etc have all just been recreational in my free time, though the University of Buffalo offered me lecture space and a free Master's for my work if I pay for a Bachelor's. Sadly, they promised me that my foundation was entirely impossible and that there was insufficient community interest to support it financially, so I was told the Master's would be useless.

I think that about sums it up.

The elderly should be harvested for organs and then disposed of in a mass grave.

Why waste good graves when there are landfills?

You can find good stuff in a landfill. I don't want to stumble across some old stiff while dragging a dirty mattress back to my car.

Is this what you call the women you pick up?

Edit: sorry ISB, we shouldn't be using your journal as a slang-off between us. Well, maybe just one more.
:shycouch:

I love this forum.

I prefer the term "your mother".

ENTRY 4: Round it Down
 

Last year I was asked to develop a mobile time card application which we might sell to potential clients. After a bit of research I put together a functioning app and incorporated layers of protection to ensure the validity of data submitted. The back end including hour totaling, notifications of missed punches, and an automated email feature for time off requests.

We used the app internally for several months, but suddenly our CEO terminated the project and went back to using a 1950s wall-mounted punch card machine.

The conversation went thusly:

CEO: “[ISB], can I see your punches? When do you punch in in the AM? Do you punch in, then get settled, get a cup of coffee? What do you do before you punch out? Do you get your coat?”

ISB: “I arrive 15 minutes early each day and get settled in. Immediately before I begin work, I punch in. And I punch out when I stop working.”

CEO: “Well most people aren't as rigid as you. We're going back to paper time cards. With those, the idea is that the punches are just a guide. See I just round it off to 40 hours.”

ISB: “What you’re describing is salary. So am I to understand that not only will I not be compensated for overtime worked, and not only will my overtime hours be bumped into the next week with the requirement that I complete all work early to take my overtime back as straight pay… but now you're removing it completely?

CEO: “I just round down. It’s easier that way.”

Apparently, our CEO became uncomfortable with the fact that the system I designed worked too well for his interests. It documented the fact that he fails to pay his employees for actual time worked, so it had to go.

Godly of him.

Hmm, disincentive. Sounds like a good strategy.

ENTRY 5: Do You Need Me to Read It To You?
 

Seven months ago, as mentioned in ENTRY 3, our beloved CEO decided that we are now a social media marketing agency, (meaning that we will log in to a client’s FB account once each week in case there are any notifications). In an effort to clarify the real-world responsibilities of such a company, I performed a few days of research and drafted A Definitive Guide to Social Media Marketing. Impressively, after only seven months, he actually read, (or claims to have read) the piece, and took a moment to send me a reply email. The message kindly shot down my effort, stating, “you know, this took a long time to write but it's all obvious facts I already know. I need solutions," effectively communicating that I’d wasted his time.

My internal response was one of mutual criticism. I wondered, "if this is all so very obvious, then why does our entire social media presence consist of a cycle of the same three pun-themed advert posts week in and week out? Why haven't we implemented any of the named suggestions which I sent back in February of 2016? And that I followed up on every week for the next seven months?” I wondered, “Did you actually read anything I wrote? Last February I called attention to the fact that our website is full of glaring errors. The video is the wrong aspect ratio for the frame object containing it and the form object beside it is unavailable. It makes us look like idiots. So fix it! The punny captions to our videos are embarrassing and I sent you new captions back in May. Use them! I sent you a perfect example of a competing regional app publisher with an awesome website. Do you like it? Then hire a web guy and make one!”

I’d framed and itemized the things we need to do. Unfortunately, our CEO never actually reads my emails, and when I mention that I’d taken the time to compose and send one, he asks me to sum it up for him on the spot so that he doesn’t have to read it.

Several times he’s called me into his office to show him how to do something in Outlook or how to save a PDF. His Outlook account is nearly 2TB in size with over four hundred unread messages. Clients phone me several times a week asking if their orders are completed, only to discover that they are still collecting dust in his Inbox.

But I’m sure he knows what’s best.

Aren't you glad this is all now past tense and receding in your rearview mirror as fast as you can press down the pedal?

I've gradually come to realise that email is one of the least effective ways of communicating in the workplace. Simply because so many people don't fucking bother to check their inbox.

Words cannot express the weight which has been lifted from me leaving that job. The CEO kept me on as an IT consultant, but I'm freed from all the garbage I had to deal with on a daily basis. Thanks for tuning in!

ENTRY 6: Do This So That I Don’t Have to Pay the Janitor
 

Like most small businesses, it is critical that each employee wear many hats to keep the place running. To date, I’ve served as a customer service rep, a prepress designer, technical support ranging from network troubleshooting to building new towers for the office, app development and publishing, developed solutions for paperless workflow automation, social media manager, marketing, commercial video design and voiceover work, blogger (researching and drafting content and publishing it to various networks), and website maintenance. But over the last few years, the majority of these responsibilities have dried up as we have no customers, so I’ve now been demoted to operating the presses and to bindery work like assembling hundreds of folders or stuffing thousands of envelopes.

And in the interest of saving money in the short-term, our CEO decisively abstains from investing in affordable, industry-standard equipment, opting instead for soul-crushing manual labor. So while any other professional print production facility would be expected to have a device called a finisher to rapidly and consistently fold and staple packets and booklets, I have the rare fortune of being told to perform this monotonous task by hand for hours and hours at a time. Just this afternoon (and for the last several days), I’ve been charged with the task of hand-collating and hand stapling 1,725 packets of paper. (Once again - that college degree really shines in this environment.)

Originally, our CEO had the brilliant idea of hiring our janitor to do the bindery work. But lately, he’s decided that he can save even more by having me do it in place of the janitor. And his sharp-minded cost-saving strategies don’t stop there. He’s instructed me to leave off lights in the building which we don’t really need, and he kicked me out of my office to lease the room out to an elderly couple for extra income. The downside of this is that I now have a desk in the middle of a giant print production floor, where I am bombarded by the whirring, buzzing, and CLACK-CLACK-CLACKing of hydraulic industrial cutters and folders all day long while I try to work.

But it was his latest cost-saving notion which was the real treat - a 40-year-old laminating machine’s power supply failed while I was doing laminating work, melting the power cable and pouring black smoke from the machine. But instead of paying a repairman, he trimmed a spare power cord he found in the back of the shop and put me right back to work. (Unfortunately this posed an electrical hazard as the cable wasn't rated for the correct voltage, and the entire socket melted shortly thereafter.)

But do this so that I don’t have to pay the janitor.

It conjures up images from Brazil.

It's been ages since I've seen Brazil - definitely revisiting it tonight!

I'm a little confused. Not a big confused - that would take up too much space and cost extra to rent, but a little confused. Is this your new job you're talking about? As you say "just this afternoon" it seems it is, yet I thought you told us you moved to a much better job where you were much happier? Is this now turning out not to be the case??

Sorry for the confusion TH - I wrote all these posts as the events transpired. All are past tense and refer to my old job. Fear not - I love the new gig!

ENTRY 7: Just Copy Someone Else’s
 

Note: the following, like all entries, was written while these events transpired. But this is all in the past and I am now gainfully employed elsewhere where I’m not working for an absolute doofus.

Last week our CEO forwarded me several notifications that our apps were each in violation of Google’s terms as we’d failed to include a privacy policy for the information we collect from our users. Of course, I’d mentioned that this was required a year and a half ago when we created the apps, but our CEO waived it off saying, “we’ll wait and see if they notice and deal with it then.”

Well, they noticed, and now our apps are going to be taken down if we don’t act quickly. Our CEO said, “It’s easy - just copy a privacy policy from some other site.” I had to explain to him that the terms of a privacy policy are specific to the information a company collects and how they securely store that info, as well as with whom they share that information. I explained that he could likely face legal action if ever the info he collected was compromised. He responded that it didn’t matter and told me to just “get it done.” Unfortunately as I am in no way familiar with the security measures which are in place by our web host, nor do I have any knowledge or experience drafting legally-binding policies, I did my best and Googled the task.

Thankfully, I found a site which poses a series of questions to the user and emails a corresponding privacy policy based on your responses. Guessing the answers as best I could, the site was ready to send us our new policy. Unfortunately, our CEO had recently come up with another penny-saving idea and had terminated my company email account. (Consequently, this action cut us off from over a dozen of our affiliated third party websites which used that email as a primary login and contact, so I was glad to find out that he’d terminated the account.) With no other option available, I happily entered our CEO’s primary company email as the contact for the privacy policy.

After explaining this to our CEO, he asked, “Wait? Does that mean they’re going to share my email with advertisers and bombard me with junk mail?”

To which I replied, “Yes. Yes it does.”

After reminding him a dozen times that the task needed to be completed or else our apps would be pulled from the app stores, he finally checked he email on the last day we had to submit the policy and found he’d not received the email. With only an hour later left in the day he shrugged and told me to get to work rebuilding the privacy policy from scratch. In the end, he finally posted our completed policy - at five thirty on that final day, further detaining me to have me explain it to him so he wouldn't have to read it. (And as per usual, I was not paid for my time.)

The apps remained in the app stores, which is critically important, considering that none of our apps have ever actually been downloaded by anyone in the eighteen months they've been available.

ENTRY 8: I Guess You Can Just Delete It?
 

Selling apps to clients has been difficult, primarily because our CEO failed to tell anyone that we exist. He seemed to think that creating a website was all one had to do and that the clients would just roll in. What he failed to realize is that, over the course of two years, Google Analytics reports that 100% of our site traffic has been bounce traffic, that is, visitors from Iraq and other countries who arrive at our site in error and immediate click away to another site. As these non-english speaking individuals are unlikely to be customers for a mobile app, we might need to consider telling people that we exist if we want more business.

Of course, we did produce one app - for a church buddy of our CEO’s. The app was never downloaded by anyone, and sat dormant for years. (Our CEO doesn’t realize that apps need to be updated with new content in order for users to keep them.) After receiving the notification about our missing privacy policy from ENTRY 7, I revisited our dormant apps and found that the primary contact link within the app utilized a form service which our CEO had terminated our account with six months prior - (another cost-saving idea!) Fortunately, no one had ever downloaded the app, so it didn’t seem to have affected the church.

I inquired as to whether or not I should invest the time to repair the damaged contact link and republish the app to restore its function. After a brief pause, our CEO checked the church’s website and found no mention of the app anywhere. Apparently, they had stopped telling people about it long ago. “I guess you can just delete it?” he replied.

Why do I even come into work?

ENTRY 9: The Janitor Needs Your Help Again
 

We’re now approaching four straight weeks without any actual design work for me to do, and it’s been over a year since we’ve had any business for our so-called “app company”, so for the next 3 days I've been instructed to join our janitor in hand-counting 23,630 laminated discs, (actual figure), and grouping them into boxes of 600. (College degree really working for me here.) The mindless inanity of monotonous, manual, unskilled labor is honestly psychologically crippling. And there is no end in sight - no way to measure any of what little progress is made in eight hours’ time. Just as I begin to see a glimpse of the bottom of a pile of discs I’ve been tallying for what seems like an eternity, someone walks over and pours another, larger pile atop my own and the whole cycle begins again.

Perhaps I could muddle through it if it weren’t for the fact that our janitor delights in listening to "Gospel Talk Radio" on the company cassette deck/boom box while she works. The sermons are astonishingly ignorant, and a slap in the face to any reasonable or rational being. But of course, this is a Christian company, so turn it up! There was the briefest moment of hope when I watched her hand reach for the dial to change the station, but my dreams were quickly dashed when she rested the tuner at a "NUMBER ONE HIT MUSIC STATION!" playing Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe." Please, god… please kill me.

I’m so close to freedom… I’m just awaiting a response from any of my senior IT position leads. Blessed is he that readeth the Job Listings... and they that hear the words of this prophecy of higher income brackets, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand.

ENTRY 10: Performing Sorcery Is Not Among My Skillset
 

(Once again, this tale of misery is related as it occurred, but thankfully is now in the past. Enjoy my agony.)

This afternoon I was presented with a manuscript and told to typeset it for publishing, to proofread, and to correct capitalization, punctuation, sentence structure, and glaring grammatical errors in order to “smarten it up and polish it.”

The document I received was a Microsoft Word file, with the entire manuscript set in all caps with rampant underlining of every word the author felt needed emphasis. Punctuation was nonexistent, nor was even a glimpse of what might be mistaken for cohesion of thought or literary intent.

But it was the subject matter which truly closed its fist upon my heart like the tight and relentless grip of death squeezing the life force from my body. Befitting of our Christian company, this was an all-caps vomitous outpouring of schizophrenia, bash-keyed into Word with all the refinement and poise of an AOL chat speak transcript. And the author’s voice was clear and consistent throughout as he repeatedly denounced evolutionists as being “ridiculous fools blind to the world around them.” And I was charged with the task of “smartening up” the verbal defecation of this man for twenty four pages rife with circular logic, self-reference, demonstrably-contradictory claims, and spooky supernatural warnings to those who do not commit to his wisdom.

The book opened with its strongest argument for faith. The author shares a gripping tale of his being awoken suddenly by his slack-jawed yokel wife who, in a drunken stupor, has stumbled outside to discover a miracle of God waiting for her in the heavens. She barked naggingly for him to join her to gaze in amazement at its beauty. It was a cloud, that if you kind of squinted a bit, and were already drunk, might look a little bit like the number “3” to a man who is clearly maddeningly obsessed with the numeral. This was definitive and undeniable evidence of the good Lord at work.

And so for the next twenty pages, our miracle witness professed every single example of the number three he could think of, particularly those which weren’t actually the number three, but sod all, he’s going for them. “The Bible has a beginning, middle, and and end! THREE!” He proclaimed. “Father, Son, Holy Spirit!” “The pen is mightier than the sword… and it takes THREE FINGERS to hold a pen!” “Trees are made of THREE parts!” (Wait a minute there... ) The word “eye” and “DNA” each have THREE LETTERS!” “Water is H-2-0! - ANOTHER THREE!” Space has THREE dimensions!” “Matter exists in THREE states!” “Atoms have THREE indivisible parts!” (Let me stop you there fella…)

After countless proclamations of truth given to phrases simply because they appear in the Bible, and after repeatedly claiming his statements to be true because, “any fool can plainly see…” he began to wander into the demonic significance of 666 (ANOTHER THREE!) and observed brilliantly that there are three 666-es in a barcode… (somewhere…) condemning all products to bear the mark of the beast… but thanked the Lord that the Bible never bears a UPC code. (?)

This wasn’t the worst manuscript I’ve been told to “polish.” I’ve dealt with everything from Jehovah’s Witness recruiting manuals to guides to vanquishing demonic possession, each of them preaching that man is a worthless being unfit for the benevolent Lord’s love. These texts universally denounce rational skepticism, critical thinking, logic, reason, scientific understanding, knowledge, and any sense of morality, instead wailing that the reader must grovel at the feet of a spooky sky god or else suffer eternal damnation.

After over 15 years of this garbage, I’m carefully and strategically planning my exit. Mine is not a psychologically sound environment for any reasonable man to work, and I’ll have no more of it.

I think you need a time machine to make that reference. Luckily you have one, so carry on.

A lot of your past job sounds difficult to bear, but this is particularly brutal. Nobody should have to go through that.

**** you nerds. I'm not even a big Carly fan but that song is pop gold.

Imagine if you had taste and were unwittingly forced to listen to it all day though.

If I had taste it would be the bee's knees.